Forgetting is considered common in everyday life. Almost every day, a person experiences individual cases of memory lapses, which may well be simple and harmless. You can forget where you put the keys or forget to call your friend back, although you promised him. There may be a more dangerous forgetfulness with some negative consequences, for example, when a witness forgets the details to be told in court.
Perhaps in this matter you once relied on a diary, or even use it always, writing down your notes there. Or use the planner in your phone so as not to condemn yourself to problems if you suddenly forget something. Maybe you are one of those people who suffer from frequent forgetfulness of events and things, one of those who constantly asks: “Where did I put the keys?”, “No one saw my glasses?”, “Could you call my phone? Forgot where I left it! Ever wonder why you forget? What is forgetfulness and how is it explained?
First, let's agree that forgetting does not mean that this information has been lost from memory or completely deleted. The reason for this is the failure, for one reason or another, to extract information from the part of the brain responsible for long-term memory.
Over the years, psychologists have developed numerous theories trying to explain the phenomenon of forgetfulness. One of the first was the theory proposed by the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1885. He independently conducted a series of experiments, with the help of which he was able to establish a direct connection between the time it takes us to retain and remember new information and our ability to retain, remember or forget this information.
In one of his experiments, Ebbinghaus prepared a three-letter list of meaningless words, working further to memorize those words and then try to remember them. The time intervals after which he began to remember ranged from 20 minutes to 31 days. Ebbinghaus published the results in his first study, On Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology.
The results of his experiment, which later became known as the "forgetfulness curve", found a connection between forgetfulness and time. After studying at first, we lose information very quickly. Other factors also play a role in the rate of information loss, for example, the way information is studied and the repetition period. However, the “forgetting curve” also showed that forgetfulness will not continue to decline until all information is lost. When a certain point is reached, the forgetting process stops. This means that information will stably remain in long-term memory, and there is no threat of losing it.
After Ebbinghaus's experiments, scientists continued to develop hypotheses and conduct research, gradually moving towards theories that would explain the phenomenon of forgetfulness and the factors leading to it. Let's turn to the most important theories, each of which considers one of the following factors, namely: failure to retrieve information, failure to store information, confusion in saving information, and other causes leading to forgetting.
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The theory of "interference"
If you asked psychologists of the 40-50s of the last century about the causes of forgetfulness, you would most likely get one answer, namely, “interference”.
According to this theory, our memories are mixed with what we have learned in the past and with what we will learn in the future. It is assumed that all of the information contained in long-term memory can be mixed together with new information that we want to store, leading to distortion or malfunction in the memory. It's hard for you to remember what happened to you on the second day of the university, because many events have passed since then and many new memories have appeared, and they just overlapped.
According to British psychologist Alan Baddeley, the theory of interference argues that forgetfulness occurs because memories interfere with each other and destroy each other. In other words, forgetting information occurs due to the interference of memories and other information in our brain.
There are two possible options for interference: proactive interference, which occurs when we cannot save some information due to the fact that we have already saved another some time ago. Old memories interfere with the memorization of new ones, for example, if a person has changed the phone, then the old phone number at first will always displace the new one in the memory. Retroactive interference occurs when we are unable to recall information that we previously stored in memory due to new, recently stored information. In other words, new information interferes with earlier information, and new memories prevent old ones from working.
It is worth noting that unique and outstanding events are less vulnerable to interference. Chances are, you remember your high school or university graduation, your wedding day, or the moment your child was born.
Disappearance theory
According to this theory, memory stores information worse and worse over time. Your forgetfulness is caused by the gradual disappearance of information in long-term memory as a result of the fact that this information is not used or retrieved for a long time.
Imagine that you have not seen a person for a very long time and have not contacted him. When you happen to meet him, it will be difficult for you to remember his name or where you saw him, because your memory during this period worked to erase information about him that you have not used for a long time.
This theory has some gaps. The most important conclusions that scientists have come to are that time may not be the only factor that explains the phenomenon of forgetting, but certainly time can cause some changes that lead to forgetfulness. This theory cannot explain why people do not forget how to swim without practicing swimming for years. Moreover, the theory cannot answer why some events and memories disappear from memory very quickly, and some remain in it for a very long time.
Extraction theory
According to this theory, forgetting does not necessarily mean erasing information from memory forever. There are simply not enough incentives and effects to extract it. This means that the degree of memorization depends on the presence of some keys and hints for retrieving information. These keys can be a certain smell, music or song, a familiar sight, and much more. You have certainly experienced a similar state: you immediately remember an event from the past only after hearing a certain song.
Besides these three theories, there are many others trying to explain how and why we forget, why we cannot remember something. Time is the most important factor in forgetting. According to the theory of disappearance, time makes it difficult to access memories, preventing the creation of an overflow of information contained in our consciousness. Perhaps there is some kind of competition between old and new information, which can lead to forgetting one of these information, as the theory of interference says.
Despite the fact that forgetfulness is perceived as something negative, it is a normal part of life. There are many things a person can do to improve their memory. Among them are concentration, repetition, the connection of new information with previous or life positions. And, of course, stay away from things that can lead to distracted thinking, and get enough sleep to give rest to the memory center in the brain.
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